By Muhammad Rafiq
DUBAI: On November 13, 2023, during the Dubai Airshow 2023, the Latvian national airline airBaltic and the aircraft manufacturer Airbus announced a firm purchase agreement for 30 Airbus A220-300 aircraft with purchase rights for an additional 20 aircraft of the same type.
With this order, airBaltic intends to operate a fleet of 100 A220-300s by 2030, making the airline the largest A220 customer in Europe, while it continues to be the largest A220-300 operator in the world.
Martin Gauss, President and CEO of airBaltic: “This day marks a significant milestone in the history of airBaltic – our plans for the first time ever to operate a fleet of 100 aircraft by 2030. For almost seven years already, the Airbus A220-300 has been the backbone of our operations and has played an integral role in the international success story of airBaltic. Being the global launch customer of the Airbus A220-300, we continue to be a proud ambassador of it. We are grateful to our partners at Airbus for the incredible support, trust, and collaboration over these years.”
“Thank you to airBaltic for being such an ambassador for the A220 with this repeat order. The A220 has been the instrument for airBaltic in its success and growth thus far and we are particularly proud to be extending this partnership well into the future with this latest order”, said Christian Scherer, Airbus Chief Commercial Officer and Head of International. “The A220 offers a unique capability in terms of range, performance, and not to forget, passenger appeal. It is a gamechanger for our customers in this important market segment, which we are serving with less fuel-burn, lower emissions and noise, making the A220 a global citizen of choice.”
In late 2016, airBaltic became the global launch operator of the A220-300 and since May 2020 operates all its flights with a single-type fleet of this aircraft type. Thus far, the airline has carried more than 13 441 000 passengers on the Airbus A220-300 aircraft. The airBaltic A220-300s have completed over 150 000 flights and flown 328 000 block hours.
The Airbus A220-300 has performed beyond the company’s expectations, delivering better overall performance, fuel efficiency, and convenience for both passengers and the staff. This aircraft offers an excellent flying experience with such benefits for passengers as wider seats, larger windows, more hand luggage space in the cabin, improved lavatories, and much more.
In addition, the aircraft is also considerably quieter – with a twice smaller noise footprint when compared to the previous generation aircraft. Moreover, at the moment, it is the most efficient commercial aircraft in the world with a transparent declaration of the life-cycle environmental impact, helping to reduce CO2 and NOX emissions by 25% and 50% respectively in comparison the previous generation aircraft and industry standards.
airBaltic is the leading airline in the Baltics and operates more than 100 routes from its home cities of Riga (Latvia), Tallinn (Estonia), Vilnius (Lithuania), and Tampere (Finland), offering connections to a wide range of destinations in the airline’s route network in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Caucasus region.
